Tamil
Tamil
Other names
Damulian, tamal, tamalsan, tambul, tamili
Spoken in ...
India: mainly in the state of Tamil Nadu in the south of the country. There are also Tamil minorities in the states of Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.
Sri Lanka: mainly in the northeast of the country. There are also Tamil minorities in Colombo and the Sri Lankan hill country.
Singapore.
Malaysia.
Number of speakers
Approximate total: 69,000,000 for whom it is their mother tongue and a further 9,000,000 for whom it is their second language.
India: 66,000,000.
Sri Lanka: 2,000,000.
Singapore: 100,000.
Malaysia: 1,000,000.
Legal status
Official language in Sri Lanka and Singapore. Official language in the territory in which it has traditionally been spoken in India. Legally recognised in Malaysia.
Hindi and English are India's official languages, and the former is also the national tongue of the Indian state. In addition to English, India's constitution recognises 22 languages (referred to as 'constitutional languages'), which, with the exception of Sanskrit, enjoy co-official status in one or more of the 28 states that make up the Republic of India. The languages in question are Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Urdu, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, Tamil and Telugu. Tamil is an official language of the state of Tamil Nadu and the union territory of Puducherry. It also enjoys a certain degree of legal recognition in the state of Gujarat.
Sri Lanka's official languages are Sinhala, Tamil and English. Sinhala and Tamil are also the country's national tongues.
Tamil is a co-official language of Singapore, alongside Malay, Chinese and English.
Malay is the national and official language of Malaysia. Despite not being an official tongue, English enjoys tremendous privileges in Malaysia, as the fact that it may be used in both of the country's parliamentary chambers indicates. Malay, English, Tamil and Mandarin Chinese are used for the purposes of education. The country's native languages do not enjoy any kind of recognition whatsoever.
Source(s)
ASHER, R.E. and C. MOSELEY (eds.) (2007) Atlas of the World's Languages. London / New York: Routledge.
CAMPBELL, G.L. (2000) Compendium of the World's Languages. 2 vols. London / New York: Routledge.
LECLERC, J. (2007) L'aménagement linguistique dans le monde. Quebec: TLFQ, Université Laval.
Official website of the government of Sri Lanka.
Comments
With 68,000,000 speakers, Tamil is currently one of the most widespread Dravidian languages, alongside Telugu (76,000,000), Kannada (35,000,000) and Malayalam (35,757,100).
The Dravidian languages were spoken throughout India until the arrival of speakers of Indo-Aryan tongues. Nowadays, 74% of Indians speak Indo-Aryan languages (Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Urdu, Gujarati, etc.), while 24% still speak Dravidian tongues. The Tamil make up 18% of the population of Sri Lanka, where they are the second largest language community behind the Sinhalese (74%), who speak the Indo-Aryan tongue Sinhala.
Within the Dravidian language family, Tamil is particularly closely related to Malayalam. In the 9th century AD, Tamil and Malayalam were dialects of a single language that the speakers of both dialects called Tamil. It was not until the 13th or 14th century that Tamil and Malayalam became completely separate languages.
The dialects of Tamil include Adi Dravida, Aiyar, Aiyangar, Arava, Burgandi, Kasuva, Kongar, Korava, Korchi, Madrasi, Parikala, Pattapu Bhasha, Sri Lanka Tamil, Malaya Tamil, Tigalu, Harijan, Sankethi, Hebbar, Tirunelveli and Madurai.
The sociolects of Tamil are highly distinct, to such an extent that it is often possible to identify a person's caste by the way they speak. There are three main stylistic variants of Tamil in widespread use, namely a classical literary form (caṅkattamiḻ), a modern literary form (centamiḻ) and a modern colloquial form (koṭuntamiḻ). The use of a particular form or another depends on the circumstances in which communication takes place, although the three blend into and influence each other.
In India, the colloquial form of Tamil (koṭuntamiḻ) is being standardised and is in general use in the fields of cinema, theatre, television and radio. In Sri Lanka, the modern standard form of the language is based on the Jaffna dialect. In its different forms, written Tamil is in tremendously widespread use. A report from 2001stated that 1,863 daily newspapers were published in Tamil.
Tamil has a literary tradition that stretches back over more than 2,000 years. In 2004 it became the first Indian tongue to be declared a classical language.
Number system
Sistema aràbic i tàmil
Direction in which language is written
Esquerra a dreta
Alphabet
Classification
-
Family:
Dravidian -
Branch:
Southern -
Group:
Tamil-Kannada
Location
-
Continents:
Asia -
Countries:
India, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Malaysia